Cocaine Cowboys Reloaded

The cocaine trade of the '70s and '80s had an indelible impact on contemporary Miami. Smugglers and distributors forever changed a once-sleepy retirement community into one of the world's most glamorous hot spots, the epicenter of a $20 billion annual business fed by Colombia's Medellin cartel. By the early '80s, Miami's tripled homicide rate had made it the murder capital of the country, for which a TIME cover story dubbed the city "Paradise Lost."